“Where is that man you married?”
This was another surprise. I could not follow the quicksilver paths of Mother’s mind, her rapid drops down the rabbit hole. Alex had come with me twice to visit her, and though Mother had given him the same blank reaction she gave me, he’d made such an impression on her that the memory of him still bubbled up from time to time.
“He’s waiting in the motorcar,” I answered her. They’d told me it wasn’t a good idea to shock her, especially with talk of death, so when she asked me about Alex I always pretended he was alive.
“He should come in,” Mother said. “It’s impolite to leave a guest outside.”
“He has a cold,” I replied. “He doesn’t want you to catch it. He’ll come in next time, I promise.”
“Is he very sick?”
I shrugged. “You know how men are. There’s a big drama about it, but in a few days he’ll be well again.” I said it as though I were any other wife, who had her husband home every day to get underfoot.
Mother blinked at me; she had never had a husband and had no idea what I meant. “He’s very good-looking,” she said. “The man you married. Isn’t he?”
“Yes.” I forced the words from my throat. “He is.”
She opened her mouth as if to say something else, then closed it and looked out the window again, the scratches visible on her neck.
I waited. The mention of Alex, the pretense that he was outside in the motorcar and not dead these three years, hit me with a stab of pain. I wondered if that pain was my destiny, if it would ever ease. In a sharp slice of self-hatred I wished I could change places with Mother, who did not know there had been a war, did not know Alex had jumped from his airplane and disappeared. Even though she groped for the line between fact and fiction like a blind man gropes through a room, still she thought that if I said Alex waited in the motorcar, then he must be there: alive and vibrant, the brim of his hat pulled down over his handsome forehead as he leaned back in the seat, wearing an overcoat and a pair of leather driving gloves I’d bought him for Christmas, dabbing his nose with a handkerchief pulled from his pocket. For Mother, it could be real.
“That skirt,” Mother said, turning back to me again. “It’s plaid. So unbecoming. And that cardigan. You should dress more nicely for him.”
Reflexively, my hand smoothed my skirt in my lap. For three years, I hadn’t cared how I dressed. “Alex likes how I look.”
“No man likes that,” Mother said, and for a single moment the Lady of the Manor was gone and Nell Christopher stared at me. “It isn’t enough just to marry the man, Joanna. You have to keep him.”
“I did keep him,” I protested, the words out of my mouth before I could remember I was arguing with a madwoman. “He loved me. He was mine.” Until he wasn’t. Not ever again.
“You’re not listening,” she said. If she noticed that I had used the past tense when talking of Alex, she did not let on. “No man is ever yours, not entirely. You must make an effort.” She glanced around the room. “Goodness. What time is it?”
I looked at my watch again, my heart sinking at her absent tone. “Four o’clock.”
“Oh, dear. I’m terribly sorry, but I must cut our visit just a little short. The viscount is coming, you see.”
“Today?” I said in dismay. “Now?”
“Yes. He’ll be here any minute.” Her eyes had gone blank again, just like that, looking at something I couldn’t see. “He’s taking me to Egypt. It’s going to be a grand adventure!”
The viscount—he’d never been given a name that I’d heard—was one of Mother’s favorite fictions, a wealthy man who was always on the verge of arriving and taking her away. He usually made an appearance when Mother was stressed or confused, or when she simply wished to exit a conversation. Once he was fixed in her mind, she would talk of nothing else for hours, sometimes days. It was a trip to Russia with the viscount that caused Mother to steal the fur stole from the ladies’ shop when I was eighteen.
The brief glimpse of Nell Christopher was gone, and I wasn’t sure I would see it again. The thought was painful and almost a relief at the same time.
“Mother,” I said, knowing she would not hear me, “the viscount is not coming.”
“He is!” When she was happy, she glowed with beauty. “He will be here soon. I’m not dressed properly. Where are my maids? I have to get ready.” She pulled back her sleeve and, right there before my eyes, she dug her nails into the soft skin of her arm just below the wrist and dragged them, putting red grooves into the white flesh as her gaze stayed far away.